News Release — Colección Río de Luz

Winningham donates complete Colección Río de Luz

Released February 20, 2013
[Contributed by Joe Sumbera]

Thanks to a generous donation from award-winning photographer Geoff Winningham, the Wittliff Collections now house the complete Colección Río de luz (River of Light Collection). All 19 titles of this important photographic book series are cataloged and available for viewing by students, researchers, and the public at large in the Wittliff reading room. Submit an online request form in advance for immediate service upon arrival.

Published by Mexico’s Fondo De Cultura Económica from 1984 to 1989, the Colección Río de luz series was edited and curated by one of the country’s most influential and active figures in contemporary photography, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio.

Each book is dedicated to one artist or subject, and the series ranges from artistic photography to pictorial works of Mexico and South America by Abbas, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Lázaro Blanco, Agustín V. Casasola, Hugo Cifuentes, Rafael Doniz, Víctor Flores Olea, Héctor García, Graciela Iturbide, Nacho López, Pedro Meyer, José Luis Neyra, Josep Renau, Miguel Rio Branco, Mariana Yampolsky, and other notable photographers, many of whom are represented with work in the Wittliff's photograpy collection.

Geoff Winningham, who has taught photography at Rice University since 1969, is best known for his black-and-white documentary work on Texas subjects—high school football, rodeos and livestock shows, and early wrestling. For over 20 years, Winningham has offered photo workshops in Mexico and photographed widely there. His monograph In the Eye of the Sun: Mexican Fiestas (Norton, 1997) is part of that work. He coordinated the Pozos Children Project, teaching photography to the youth of Mineral de Pozos, Mexico, which resulted in an exhibition of their darkroom prints, Mi pueblo, being donated to the Wittliff. Winningham’s most recent book is Traveling the Shore of the Spanish Sea: The Gulf Coast of Texas & Mexico (Texas A&M Press, 2010). The Wittliff Collections own over 300 photographs by Winningham, one of the largest collections of his work. Geoff Winningham lives and works in Houston and Mexico.